By Scott Gilfoid: Former IBF super middleweight champ Lucian Bute (30-1, 24 KO’s) is showing a lot of courage by being willing to fight undefeated light heavyweight knockout artist Denis Grachev (12-0, 8 KO’s) on November 3rd at the Bell Centre, in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Normally this isn’t the kind of that you see from someone coming off of a bad knockout loss like Bute.

The 32-year-old Romanian talent was taken out in the 5th round last May when he experimented with a stationary fighting stance against the brawler Froch in Nottingham, UK. That probably the dumbest thing that you could ever imagine a fighter doing, but it shows you what the many years of soft match making did to Bute.

It gave him a swelled head to where he thought he could land a single shot and take Froch out of there much in the same way Bute had been doing against the god awful opposition that had been fed to him in previous bouts over the course of his nine-year pro career. When Froch failed to collapse on the canvas like most of Bute’s other opposition, Bute didn’t have a clue in how to make any adjustments. He just stuck with the same plan that he had going into the fight and continued to try and slug with Froch until Bute was blasted out in the 5th.

If Bute plans on beating the 29-year-old Grachev, he’s going to need to go back to his old fighting style of the past where he would hit and run all night. Bute can’t stand in front of Grachev, because he’s a much bigger puncher than Froch. There’s no comparison. In Grachev’s last fight, he had Ismayl Sillakh running all around the ring trying to escape from his pressure. Grachev finally caught up to Sillakh in the 8th and blasted him out. Bute is going to have to his legs more than he has in many years if he wants to win this fight, because Grachev isn’t going to get bowled over from one of Bute’s pot shot uppercuts.

I like this fight, because if Bute can dominate Grachev, then he’ll definitely be able to dominate Froch, because Grachev can do everything Froch do but with a lot more power.